Monday, April 2, 2007

Moneyball

Politics is getting more expensive - but it's still a small-ball game. The Washington Post has the scoop:
Eighty percent of [Hillary Clinton's] donations came in amounts of $100 or less.
Not surprisingly, Hillary "The Machine" Clinton is well ahead of most others in fundraising. The key wrinkle is that Barack Obama has not yet disclosed his fundraising, which is expected to be in the $20-25m range. Besides being the root of all kinds of evil, money has a few functions in a political campaign: one is to spend on campaigns and ads; the other is to signal strength to supporters and opponents - and pundits. Money from previous campaigns and personal coffers doesn't fulfill the latter function.

Here's what we have so far:

CandidateNew money raised ($m)Money from old campaignsChatter Ranking
Mitt Romney20.62.3R.3
Rudy Giuliani14R.2
John McCain12.5R.1
************************************
Hillary Clinton2610D.2
Barack Obama????D.1
John Edwards15D.3
Bill Richardson6D.5
Chris Dodd45D.8
Joe Biden31.5D.7

No word on the low-rent candidates. Instead, the news from the cellar today is that Tom Tancredo has entered the race, further crowding the field of "true conservatives" as an issue candidate.

2 comments:

Karen said...

Why does it cost so much to run for president?? It would be wiser if the candidates didn't waste their money on mud-slinging TV spots.

Our country needs a better public forum to inform people on who's running. It would be so much cheaper to set up an offical goverment website and/or TV channel where people could watch interviews about each canidate, broadcast deabtes and all that kind of stuff. I would rather hear what the canidates stand for at place like that then have to watch all those crappy TV spots that put down the other candiates.

I say each canidate should have an equal amount of publicity to address the nation.

Something has to be better than this "moneyball" stuff.

Good post!

Macro Guy said...

Karen -

America spends more every year on Easter candy than it does every four years on a president.

I think it's remarkably cheap, not expensive - maybe I'll write a full-length argument about that.